Bright Ideas! Making the Most of Your Anchor Charts!

I’m joining LOTS of other bloggers in a BIG blog hop to share some bright ideas and time-saving tips you can use in your classroom! Here are some ideas for
making the most of your anchor charts!

Anchor charts are a wonderful tool to document students’ thinking and learning and serve as a visual reference of our learning process. They keep what we are

currently learning accessible and enable students to

make later connections. Anchor charts “anchor” our learning,

bring focus to a particular strategy or standard we are working

on and support students during independent

practice, class discussions or whenever they just

need a little reminder.

Record The Learning Process

Make Your Charts Interactive

For me the most effective charts are FUN and made with my students.

I sometimes am the ‘recorder’ for their ideas, questions,

noticings, and thinking, but I also like to make our charts interactive.

One way I do that is by making my own sticky notes with

construction paper shapes that fit the topic or theme

of the lesson. My students love these

and it’s a fun way for them to add their ideas!

I use removeable glue sticks so that pieces can be moved

around or sorted. This also makes your charts easy to reuse!

I also collect all sorts of Post-Its and sticky notes.
You can find seasonal ones at craft stores and in
the dollar section at Target. If you have a die cut machine
at your school those work great too!

.

Be Flexible When Making Charts

Let’s face it. Some charts can be time consuming to create. I don’t always

go all out. Sometimes the need arises and you seize that

teachable moment by grabbing the nearest piece of paper, making a chart,

and turning it into an impromptu lesson!

Other times I plan my charts ahead so that I can reuse them from year to year.

Those are the ones I gussy up with color and spend more time on.

Cut That Baby Up And Reuse It

I’ve learned to work smarter not harder when reusing my charts.

Don’t be afraid to cut them up and reuse your artwork if you decide to

take the learning in a different direction!

Love these ideas? Pick your favorites to PIN and share with your teacher friends. Choose a topic below in the link up for more bright ideas.For more anchor chart ideas visit my Anchor Charts board on Pinterest!
Visit the Bright Ideas board for more bright ideas for your classroom!

Subscribe by email to get the latest posts and exclusive freebies sent straight to your inbox.

Share this:

Comments

I am such an admirer of your anchor charts! I pin them whenever I see them because I know they are such high quality charts! Thanks for sharing some of your tips for creating them. How did I not know about repositionable glue!?! I will be picking some up today!

Your anchor charts are beautiful! I've never heard of repositionable glue before – I'll have to check that out. I love that you use shape post-it notes to spice up your charts. I try to use a variety of bright colors, but I'm going to use shapes now too!

I'm so impressed with your anchor charts, they're beautiful! I'm a true believer in developing them WITH the children! I have much more primitive anchor charts in my class, but they are so important, especially when you want children to remember what they've learned a week later! Now I'm hoping you'll write a post on how to display them all!

Gah, Linda!! How about we work out a deal? I'll operate an Instagram account for you and you make anchor charts for me???? To.Die.For. I'm super jealous of everything in this post…and I need to make my second trip to Target for the day to look for those glue sticks!! <3

This blog post was gorgeous and oh my word, your anchor charts are like pieces of art!!!! I had no idea about repositionable glue, how awesome!! Thank you so much for sharing all of these tips Linda, I am pinning away right now 🙂 🙂

I need to get some of those repositionable glue sticks! I love how you make your anchor charts interactive! They are so useful during future lessons when the kids need a quick refresher. Thanks for sharing all these ideas 🙂

Your anchor charts are amazing!! And I've never heard of reposition able glue sticks before! I'm going to have to go get some! Love how you make your charts interactive to keep all your students involved!!

This is very creative and clever! I have recently found a site that teaches how to make an org chart in word and it was filled with many modern styles of making org charts. I would recommend it to all!

I love how you take anchor charts beyond just a poster. I like to leave some of my charts without the 'meat' of the information and laminate it. Then, I take a picture and make copies for the students. The students and I finish the chart together. They write on their page and I use a chisel tip wet erase marker. The students have a reference page to put in their interactive notebook or to turn in for a grade. I can clean off the chart to use for the next class or next year! Thanks for the inspiration to do more!